Peter Blaise 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Escapist Website Mass Bans (Then Unbans And Guilts) Users Who Mention Adblock

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 21 Apr, 2010 @ 09:37am

    Re: Who are the leeches -- the advertisers, the web masters, or the readers?

    Leeches?

    We come for the content, not the ads.

    You want my money? Earn it.

    The advertisers and the web site owner / designer are the insensitive ones who feel "entitled" to my eyeballs and want my eyeballs to sell to advertisers against my will, or they damn me.

    No one's preventing the web site from earning income ... except the web site itself. "... if you've got ads on your website that are annoying your users, that is your fault -- not your users' fault ..." says it all.

    If you have an alternative, suggest it.

    Otherwise, just like in my paper subscriptions, I'll skip the ads. thank you. Now, can you imagine a magazine canceling sending me my subscriber because they learned that I was tearing out advertisement pages?

    And then you call us leeches?

    Wow.

    We have all the money, and if someone fails to earn it, you call us leeches!

    I'm not gonna click on their damn ads anyway, so why risk angering me against the supposed goodwill of the product by forcing me to know and identify obnoxious, inappropriate products that I will probably decide to boycott from now on if I can't "turn the page" and move on from their mismatched, in-your-face advertising.

    Adblockers are GOOD for advertisers because it forces them to build better, more consumer friendly, mor servicable presentations, instead of hanging around the old ways of doing thigns that did nto work, then trying to force those non-workign ways down our throats, blaming us for their own ineptitude.

    Leeches indeed. They're called advertisers.

    Click!
    Peter Blaise dot com

  • On the post: Photographer Makes One-Third Of His Living Expenses Off Only 94 Fans

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 16 Apr, 2010 @ 01:20pm

    Re: Paywall

    Ctein has a Focal Press book out there ( http://ctein.com/booksmpl.htm ), offers workshops ( http://ctein.com/news.htm ), and writes for photography magazines ( http://www.phototechmag.com/index.php/past-issues/januaryfebruary-2010/ctein )and has an avid following that way. If anyone feels excited by his offerings, and they want more than they can read at their bookstore or newsstand free, they can donate. Simple, no? Could Ctein make more money? Yeah, sure, anybody could. Doing what? Doing what he wanted to do, or something else? Ctein's doing what he wants to do, and is making fifteen grand a year from supportive donations, on top of other sources of income. Cool or what? I'm making zilch from my creative pleasures, so I better change my ways if I want to do what I want, and get paid for it! Thanks for the poke in the eye about Ctein.

  • On the post: Photographer Makes One-Third Of His Living Expenses Off Only 94 Fans

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 16 Apr, 2010 @ 01:03pm

    Re: how does this compare to other photographers?

    These aren't numbers in space. He's making fifteen grand a year from supporter's donations. Want some? Do the same. What do you expect to learn form any story but what's in the story? If he lived in Costa Rica, he'd be rich. If he lived in New York City, he's either have a rent controlled apartment, or he'd need a partner, or another job. But that's not the story. The story is that he's making fifteen grand a year from supporter's donations. What do other photographers make? Who cares? This could be anybody creating intellectual property -- the thrust of this web blog site. It's not about photographers, it's about creativity and subsequent marketing in society. Cool or what?

  • On the post: Canadian City Asks Google To Reshoot Street View Shots To Get Rid Of Crime Scene

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 11 Mar, 2010 @ 06:53am

    Perhaps Google will augment their metadata

    Perhaps Google will augment their metadata to include "temporary" situations observed by their drivers (voice recognition - drive safely!), and even to include comments on street view images, such as "request to update from citymayor@windsor.ca", and so on.

    It makes sense to me to have the Google Street View Camera Truck driver or passenger record metadata on the conditions, especially temporary and under-construction conditions, into the street view image metadata -- it can only enhance Google's reliability if they can immediately put on a map web page "some temporary activities in these scenes may no longer be extant" or whatever.

    I've already used Google versus Bing satellite views to see the progress of construction or the change from winter to summer in some areas. Comparative possibilities are very informative.

    And I hope Google NEVER permanently deletes street view archives. Wouldn't it be fascinating to set the way back machine to before, say, a bomb went off, or to before reconstruction or renovation, or historically to when you were born? I say KEEP THE DATA!

  • On the post: Canadian City Asks Google To Reshoot Street View Shots To Get Rid Of Crime Scene

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 11 Mar, 2010 @ 03:53am

    Great -- this shows they recognize photographer's rights

    Great -- this shows they recognize photographer's rights.

    Let's use this a referential precedent next time some bone-headed community tries to claim public photography violates privacy.

    Also, we should call for volunteer street-view photography mashups from the Internetting public whenever some locality claims Google street views should stop at their border.

    Would they rather have sloppy or organized visitors? And don't forget the service Google street views does for locals ... and their own service providers, such as their own police!

    Oh well, good for Windsor to use the Internet, and good for them to care enough to participate rather than try to back out of modern reality.

  • On the post: Do IT People Hate Their Jobs?

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 17 Feb, 2010 @ 08:22am

    Complete and total disrespect by idiot bosses

    As a IT staff member, how many times do I have to explain to the non-technical bosses of the technical people that an EXE slide show in email is not installing anything on the receiver's computer; that you cannot browse the web, you browse your already-downloaded-to-your-hard-drive temp files; that I'll take responsibility for modifications to "my" work computer since the helpless desk can't even help with a standard install, so I don't feel compromised at all by my own custom installation enhancements -- I'll support myself, thank you -- and all they do is swap preconfigured hard dives anyway, so who cares if I have non-standard Firefox or Opera installed, they don't deal with it or support it anyway, they just bulldoze it with a new drive? Unfixably insecure, unreliable, incompatible, arduous Microsoft products are better because ...?

    On the other hand, as an independent servicer for 30 years, I LOVE helping end users one-on-one. They teach me so much, and I get to bash Microsoft at their complete and total agreement and amusement.

    It's the bosses, not the end users.

    I HATE zero-technical no-brain "technical" bosses, and there's no way to make them happy except to pile on, bashing the poor end users who already get no support nor training, and who get crappy computer setups.

    Conversely, I LOVE end users, and prefer to work directly for them, especially if they have checkbook in hand.

    Peter Blaise http://www.peterblaise.com/

  • On the post: Next, Microsoft Will Release An Even Worse Operating System To Jack Up The Prices On Vista…

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2009 @ 05:37am

    .

    "... Okay, the downgrade fee is from the OEM, NOT from Microsoft ..."

    Wrong. Microsoft already charged the vendors in bulk for Vista on every PC they sell, so you cannot buy a PC without the vendor already including the price of Vista in the total price. So, when we ask for XP instead, they cannot make XP available instead, only as an extra price addition -- we pay for Vista, which we do not want, AND we pay for XP, which we at least tolerate. Also, Microsoft is raising prices on XP to try and stop their total loss of revenue due to Vista being accurately perceived as anti-customer crap (and 7 will be no different).

    What we are seeing is the fallout results of monopoly practices. Microsoft won, we all loose, and now Microsoft is complaining that they have so little future now that they have won their monopoly position. It's what they deserve, and what we deserve for allowing ourselves to be bushwhacked by a shrub for 8 years. (Clinton's administration was moving forward on the break up of the monopoly.)

    ,

  • On the post: Next, Microsoft Will Release An Even Worse Operating System To Jack Up The Prices On Vista…

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2009 @ 05:28am

    .

    "... I hear good things coming from Windows 7 ..."

    Nope, just repackaging. Same half-dozen confusing product line, same re-learn everything to use it, same replace your peripherals and upgrade your software if you're coming from XP or earlier, same double your PC resources requirements, same old crap from the same old monopoly.

    .

  • On the post: Next, Microsoft Will Release An Even Worse Operating System To Jack Up The Prices On Vista…

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2009 @ 05:02am

    Yes, break up the Microsoft monopoly at last ... though Microsoft seems to be hell bent to do that themselves!

    .

    "... The launch of Vista has been a massive disappointment for the company, not a part of a nefarious strategy to jack up the prices on XP ..."

    That's not the point. XP isn't good, it's merely better.

    The point is that Microsoft is taking advantage of it's monopoly position to charge for BOTH Vista and XP for those who do not want Vista.

    Try this:

    "... The launch of Vista has been a massive disappointment for the company, proving the point of why we break up monopolies -- because monopolies diminish competitive innovation in commerce that should provide opportunities and enhancements to the qualities of life of the citizen ...".

    At least that's the way the US Constitution reads.

    .

  • On the post: Wikipedia's Circular Logic Pops Up Again

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 13 Feb, 2009 @ 05:16am

    .

    Wikipedia is not a source, it's a pointer to other sources. Wikipedia declines original research and reporting (yeah, right!). It's group-vetted testimony on other sources, and it's constantly in flux, so anyone using it should cite specific page versions and date.

    The newspaper deserves the bonehead award.

    .

  • On the post: There's Stupidity Somewhere Here, But It's Not Coming From Google…

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 12 Feb, 2009 @ 04:12am

    .


    "... attention-seeking and hyperbolic ..." YES! Like so many headlines on the covers of newspapers, magazines, and the front pages of web sites: "Wikipedia/the Internet/Google/Motherhood: blessing, or the most evil plot in the world? ... exclusive story inside, read on ...".

    These are stories written from hunger -- the author wants to get paid, and there is no editor, and the goal, after all, is to keep the advertisements from bumping into each other -- you have to have something in between or they look too crowded!

    Remember, these are vehicles for advertising, and the advertisers are their real audience and target, NOT the reader.

    None of these writers wants your MIND, they want your EYEBALLS so they can turn over your WALLET to the advertisers for MONEY.

    I imagine that a study of pre-historic or pre-literate societies would reveal the same scanning -- you look out of the cave and scan, you study an animal in the distance, but ignore the familiar or uninteresting nearby because there's no food nearby, you look back in the cave to get a weapon to catch that animal.

    "... Scanning ..." is a human survival tactic, keeping us able to pay attention to emergent situations as we look for value, preventing us from getting lost against our own self interest in things that do not benefit us.

    More useful would have been a report from those authors if they had gone back to look at the specific content in question, the content that was skimmed, and read it themselves to report on it -- hey, it's crap ... or ... it's not germane to their research ... no wonder the readers skimmed it! Or, as already noted, "Hey, it's hard to read anything online since the computer screen only shows 1/2 a page, and it's slow, so why not print and read on paper because paper's better for that, and use the computer for what it's best for -- searching, sorting, selecting, and skimming! "Good readers know how to skim" would have been an alternative headline if the writers weren't so bent on their own trajectory.

    "... linkbait ..." -- great term, exactly what such headline grabbers are after: making the advertisements look properly spaced apart from each other. "Filler". Same here on TechDirt? Maybe. We all have ulterior motive$.

    "... over time, it seems harder to switch between modes of filtering inform ..." No, not really. Over time IN ONE PLACE it seems harder to find value, so we tend to leave. Some people watch TV for entertainment and distraction from the other worries of the day. Some people watch TV to catch up on the news. It's not TV, it's how the person uses TV. Same with the Internet. Some people use it for one reason, some for another. The report writers did not audit the users to first see what was their purpose in using the Internet, so their resulting report is bogus, as expected.

    "... a large majority of today's people simply don't think ..." What does "today" have to do with it? Someone else's ability to think is not even accessible let alone measurable by another. YOU may think I'm thoughtless, but maybe I'm solving my family's life-long problems in my head and you're waay less interesting to me now? Rephrase that as "other people's thoughts still inaccessible to others". Duh!

    I skimmed the rest of everyone's comments, thanks all ... nothing personal, I'm just not as interested here as I am interested in spending time elsewhere. Bye!

    .

  • On the post: Little Trees Air Freshener Company Ads Warn People Not To Mess With Its Trademark

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2009 @ 06:14am

    No surprise here, just trademark owners going about their business

    .

    No surprise here, just trademark owners going about their business .. if inarticulately (hey, they make stinkin' flat pine tree car ornaments, after all - and only for a buck!)

    Opening post:

    "... a misstatement of trademark law... as is the information on Little Trees' own web page about its trademark, where the company incorrectly claims that "the law requires that we take action when someone is using them without permission." ..."

    "... That is not true. The law requires that a trademark holder actively police infringement on its trademarks and activity that would likely cause confusion or dilution of the trademark ..."

    BOTH WRONG!

    The "law" does not "require" ANYTHING!

    However, as stated, precedent seems to show that registered trademark holders get better protection in court and in actions at the US Trademark Office when they can show that they have been aggressively acting to prevent their trademark from becoming generic or "diluted".

    Since Photoshop users tend to be a funnel where familiar images of trademarks get played with, it makes absolute sense for trademark owners to jump into Photoshop user's faces and say,

    "Hey, create your own stuff, this is ours!"

    You think this is bad? You think this is inarticulate misunderstanding of trademark law and intellectual property law (not "private" property law - geesh!), read some public documents from supposedly in-the-know trademark lawyers themselves!

    Hahahahahahah!

    .

  • On the post: Lawyer Who Sues Yelp Admits He Had No Idea About Section 230 Safe Harbors

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2009 @ 02:53am

    A judge should send them back to negotiation

    .

    If I were the judge assigned the case (and I've seen this happen in court), I'd first ask,

    "Have you tried to resolve this with each other?"

    If the answer is, "No," as the dentist seems to say, then I, as judge, would reschedule for a month, letting the parties know in the strictest terms that I'm miffed and don't like being used as the first line of communication between parties. If the case is not dropped by the month, I'd want a very complete explanation of the attempt to resolve. Then the case could proceede.

    It really is up to the judge how silly and inappropriate these things can become.

    However, I've also seen judges complete loose it and act on a clear misunderstanding (to coin a phrase!), and I've also seen judges "play" with a case no end for their own entertainment.

    So it goes both ways, er, all ways:

    - silly plaintiffs,
    - silly lawyers,
    - silly judges,
    - silly laws.

    It's never ending. People are like that. Always have been. Always will be.

    People.

    Can't live with 'em, can't sue without 'em! ;-)

    .

  • On the post: Group Wants A National Ban On Yakking While Driving

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 15 Jan, 2009 @ 05:36am

    Private versus public:

    .

    Ahhh, I know what the problem is:

    Private versus public.

    When we're chatting on the phone, we're having a private experience, separate from the public experience around us.

    This is especially dangerous when the public venue in which we are having a private experience is the high speed, highly dangerous highway, full of traffic, full of other people.

    That is why I walk to another room when I'm on the phone at home. There's no way I can reconcile the private chat with the "public" in the rest of my house -- perhaps speaker phone?

    But at least my home is not rolling along the crowded highway supposedly under my concerted control with supposedly undivided attention.

    It's ridiculous to hear someone in the room at home who only hears my side of the conversation and tries to control the, to them, invisible dialog. And then the person on the other end gets confused, "Are you talking to me?"

    Hilarious.

    Ludicrous.

    On the highway, dangerous.

    But, as mentioned, there's no real avenue of enforcement.

    The police only act on radar because it's easy, profitable, and well documented for court -- an all around"no brainer".

    It's unreasonable to ask the "no brainer" police to actually asses safe driving, or conversely, unsafe driving, let alone ask them to document and present a bona fide prima facia case in court based on such an observation, let alone make additional revenues for their community with such arrests.

    Air horns and screaming public address systems blaring from passing cars at the poky people chatting on their cell phones seems the only way.

    .

  • On the post: Group Wants A National Ban On Yakking While Driving

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 15 Jan, 2009 @ 03:31am

    In-car phone use will NEVER rise to be on the cop's RADAR! $$$

    .

    In-car phone use will NEVER rise to be on the cop's RADAR! $$$

    On the one hand, I remember the first advertisements for car radios, which were intended to use the car battery, but only while the car was stationary, so, for instance, you could listen to the ball game while having a picnic beside your parked car.

    Now we think of radios as normal in cars, even safety enhancements, especially with news and traffic reports helping us avoid traffic jams.

    Car phones were fist touted as safe because you could call in accidents and call for help. At first, there were scant few car phones, so people weren't generally chatting on them all the freakin' time!

    Then global positioning, where at first people actually got where they were going without stopping in the lane wondering if they should turn off or not, but now people turn right into a culvert or river without looking because their GPS told them to!

    Anyway, I pass in frustration and then look back in wonder at every driver wandering the road as if in a world unto themselves, and invariably they are on the phone, completely unaware of their presence in the way of the flow of traffic, one of them even cutting off an ambulance yesterday.

    Here's my logic. When driving, you can pay attention to only one of three things at a time, at the expense of the others:

    1 - what's going on outside the car, in the car's environment -- traffic -- this is pretty much the safest and most aware way to drive.

    2 - what's going on inside the car, the car's interior -- the speedometer, the screaming kids, a bumble bee -- this is starting to get dangerous, but on occasion it supports our safe participation in zone 1 above, especially if we check our speed when we see a speed limit sign now and then. However, since day one with cars, too much time ignoring zone 1 in preference for zone 2 has always killed -- fumbling for a cigarette, spilled coffee, unfolding a map while cruising, and so on.

    3 - what's going on elsewhere -- in our head, over the radio, over the phone -- this is where we become an impediment to the flow of traffic

    Explore this as you drive and see if you can find a pattern of safety. I think safety goes down and risk goes up as we pay attention down the list, that is, we're less safe when we pay attention to our car's interior, such as watching the speedometer, and even less safe when we pay attention to a universe totally disconnected from the flow of traffic, such as chatting with someone back home or back at the office.

    We supposedly have hand-free laws, but, like seatbelt laws, they don't show up on a radar gun in the cop's hand as they hide by the roadside, so it's highly unlikely the police will ever participate in enforcing this as a safety issue.

    Our challenge is to find a way to enforce safety, not just make more laws. People are addicted to their phones and their phone relationships with people not sharing their immediate space. Fine. What can we do about it -- other than blast the horn or get a PA public address system and scream at them as we pass?

    I', serious! What can we do that will be effective?

    .

  • On the post: iTunes Songs Don't Have DRM, But They Contain Your Email Address

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 15 Jan, 2009 @ 03:02am

    Replace it with the email address od the RIAA!

    .

    "I bought a song as a present for their birthday -- just like I used to do with CDs."

    "I bought/sold the song at a music swap/used-music meetup."

    "I received the song as a gift."

    "My laptop was stolen ... or lost for days, and I just got it back from the airport lost-and-found."

    Hey. how long before anyone automates a little hack tool that puts the email address of the RIAA president into every song on your computer for you?

    Hahahahah.

    .

  • On the post: Copyright Once Again Being Used To Hinder Culture, Not Enable It

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2009 @ 07:34am

    How about annual value assesment and tax bill on intellectual property, just like on our houses?

    .

    Earlier: "... The copyright holders should feel ashamed of themselves -- using a welfare system to bankrupt an innocent person ..."

    Hahahahah. Very funny ... if you meant it to be funny. Very scary if you did not mean it to be funny!

    Earlier: "... Let's hope the Obama administration fixes crap like this. I have a ton of stolen downloaded art I'd like to throw into a book ..."

    Hahahah ... wait a minute. I'm sensing a theme here. Are we being serious, or have we taken a turn towards parody ... very scary otherwise!

    Earlier: "... To forbid copying reminds me of the prohibition of the 1920s when alcohol was forbidden ..."

    Um ... brewing your own alcohol isn't stealing someone else's recognized property. Copying is.

    Earlier: "... If this music were in the public domain, or were to be licensed for $20,000 instead of $200,000, we wouldn't be reading this story ..."

    Perhaps there's a middle ground.

    Once something is released into the public, even if under copyright, what if there were an independent review board assessing value, like a tax value assessment on our homes, for instance?

    Then you'd pay property taxes at that rate, and it's up to you to market your property to stay profitable, or release it to the public domain where you'd no longer own it and no longer be liable for taxes.

    Any thoughts on this type of an idea?

    - Something to recognize the "property" status of intellectual property as having value, and once public, taxable value.

    And something to incentivize keeping it in the commercial marketplace, in publication, in the public, in the "culture", either by owners and profitable for them, or public and benefiting all?

    Your thoughts?

    .

  • On the post: Copyright Once Again Being Used To Hinder Culture, Not Enable It

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2009 @ 07:12am

    Why do you think private property owners shouldn't have the right to decide what to do with their own private property?

    .

    You got it backwards. It's not the copyright laws that are stoopid here, it's the copyright property owners who seem averse to their own informed financial interests. And since it's their property, it's their right to be stoopid with it.

    Same with someone holding an valuable car in a garage against all bidders, letting it rust. It's their's. Should we have a law that says, "If someone values your property but is not willing to pay for it, you must turn it over anyway."?

    You're suggesting that "public good" and "right of conversion to public domain" are superior to personal property ownership rights, as if their songs were some land and we NEEDED to make a public highway out of it.

    Capitalism depends on ownership. Sometimes owners act against the interest of others. Fine. The alternative ... socialism? Cool. Show me a socialist society where contemporaneous authored intellectual property is forcibly made freely available with no control by the author. Really. I wanna see some of THAT culture.

    ... waiting ...

    .

  • On the post: Japanese Group Asks Google To Shut Down Street View

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 20 Dec, 2008 @ 07:12am

    Re: Re: Re: The day is not far

    I don't get it - are you being facetious?

  • On the post: Japanese Group Asks Google To Shut Down Street View

    Peter Blaise ( profile ), 20 Dec, 2008 @ 07:06am

    Re: "street view", that is, free speech, "is evil"?

    Honestly, trying to prevent people's free speech rights to take photos in public, and to publish photos of public spaces is just wrong - evil, in fact.

    I think that is the kind of society we are trying to grow out of, the kind of throw-back societies in Saudi Arabia, the Taliban Malitia, and so on, where one or some in power do all the (lack of) thinking, then incflict their conclusions on everyone else.

    Ouch!

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